London, 1893. One by one, the members of a returned Egyptian expedition are dying, and the newspapers vie with one another to cry "the pharaoh's curse." Auberley Brooks, the late egyptologist's archivist, puts no faith in the curse and opens an investigation of her own. The trail of deaths leads out of London's archives and into the sands of Abydos — to an ancient gate that remakes the fate of any soul convinced the universe had wronged them.